Though destined to become one of the most famous sculptors of his age, Chantrey began life as a painter. This portrait by Phillips was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1818 and shows Chantrey at the age of thirty-seven. He is holding a modelling tool in his left hand and rests his arm on a marble head. The statuette in the background is of Lady Louisa Russell. In his memoirs the artist Charles Robert Leslie remembered Chantrey as 'handsome (his mouth exceedingly beautiful) with a bluff John Bull look'.